This past weekend, English teacher Ms. Nancy Supanich took our class on a field trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Along with Mr. Ferdman, Ms. Neff, and another art class, we took a day off campus to learn about art and the meaning of art.

Our journey to LACMA began a few days before we even got there. Mr. Ferdman graciously took his time to speak to our English class and share his deep knowledge about art and way to read and interpret art. We also learned about ways to speak about and discuss art. This was helpful to learn before going on the trip because we had an idea of what we were going to see and were now knowledgeable of many different art terms and would understand them if our docent were to use them.

The day started off a little shaky. We hit typical LA traffic on the way there. We arrived a little bit late but it didn’t end up really affecting our day. Once we got there, we were split up into groups of about ten, each group led by a docent. A docent is a person, typically a volunteer, who acts as a guide in a museum or art gallery.

Our docent introduced herself, gave us a little preview of what we would be seeing, told us what LACMA was all about, and then handed us pads of paper and pencils. She offered these as a tool to write down our thoughts and feeling while looking at the art.

The first couple paintings we saw were from Mexico in an exhibit called Pinxit Mexici. We saw a painting called “Interior of the Church of Corpus Christi and View of Main Altar” by Nicolás Enríque, which at first seemed like a room with a few people in it. Our docent went on to tell us that this painting didn’t always look like it did today. When the museum originally got the painting, the floor of the church in the painting was empty. Experts inspected the painting and found that the artist had drawn multiple people on the floor of the church, but later painted over them with another layer of paint. You can hardly make out the outline of the people standing in the middle of the floor. After getting special permission, LACMA had specialists remove the layer of paint that the original artist had put over the people. The restoration was a success and today the painting is in LACMA with all of the people present and in color. This is just one of the cool stories that we learned about what at the museum.

Senior Molly Levitt said about the Mexican exhibition, “I learned a lot about Spanish culture and how they beautify death. It was cool to go back to a museum that I haven’t been to since I was 14 and view it from a different perspective four years later.”

Other exhibits we saw included an exhibit about how an artist views the country of Brazil, recreated pieces from images of old magazine ads, and an artist who took Instagram pictures and transformed them into clever pieces of art. Overall, we saw many different styles of art, from classical oil paintings on canvas to modern art on several different surfaces and materials.  

The whole field trip was connected to a project we were doing in our class called the “Creative Selfie” project. With this project, we were tasked to create an image in the form of a “selfie” that went beyond the face and represented something important to us. My classmates and I came up with many different creative ideas and representations of ourselves.

Senior Yarden Henn said that “My experience at LACMA helped influence my creative selfie a lot. It was great to be able to see all of these amazing pieces of art and use them to shape my own style.”

Ms. Supanich said, “I really enjoy bringing the seniors on a field trip outside of school where we can talk about things that we talked about in the classroom. Things like magical realism, how to read art, and what is really true. I think we had a great time.”

Overall, the LACMA field trip was a success and helped our classes further advance our knowledge of how to read art and gain inspiration for our own creative work.